Posts Tagged ‘Contracting’

Let me ask you a question?  What is the worst thing that could happen to your contracting, freelancing or small business?

I would imagine right up there with going bust and being sued is a visit from the tax man.   It’s never happened to me (and touch wood never will), but we all know that when the HMRC (or whoever your particular taxman works for) comes-a-knocking, we better have good records to back up all our business activities.

But do you really want all that paperwork floating around or sitting in files taking up space?

Paper Vs Electronic Storage – the UK Law

Following the UK Electronic Communications act 2000, an electronic form of document is deemed sufficient evidence in law.  That goes for contracts, agreements and of course receipts (seek your own legal advice to be sure).

This means if you have a scanned copy, then that is good enough for the taxman.  This also means you no longer have to store paper copies of everything.

Scanners and their problems

However, there is a problem in transforming everything from paper into bits and bytes.  When you go out and buy a dedicated scanner or multi-function printer/scanner, the device does not know what you are scanning.  It doesn’t know if that page of A4 is an invoice or a purchase order.

Scan all your invoices, receipts, orders or contracts and all you end up with is a big mess of PDF files named SCAN0001.PDF, SCAN0002.PDF and so on.  Whether you scan to JPEG, TIF or PDF – the sequential numbering of files generated actually makes the problem worse.

How do you find that critical contract when you have 5,000 PDFs and they have file names of SCAN00001 through to SCAN05000?

If you are lucky and prepared to spend the money, some scanners will perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the documents.  Whilst this will slow down the scanning process, it does mean you can Windows (or Mac) search the PDFs for a known phrase.  But what about if you don’t know what text was on the contract?

There is a solution.

Decent PDF names

Over time, I have come to find that scanning to a PDF is the best option.  PDF scans will deal with multiple pages and front/back scanning (the term for this is Duplex) a lot better than scanning to a graphical format such as JPEG or TIFF.

Assuming you also want to scan to PDF, there is a free utility available created by a chap named Michael Weiner which allows the batch renaming of PDF files.   The great thing about this utility is that it cycles through all PDFs in a directory, displays them on screen, asks what you want to call it, and then renames the file for you.  The utility can be downloaded free here.

The way I scan my documents is that I scan any documents on receipt (or save received PDFs) to a directory then each weekend I quickly run through them using this utility, giving them decent names.  Once renamed, I then file them away.

Incidentally, I also save invoices and notes that are emailed to me in the same way.  I simply print any documents received to PDF (using the Free CutePDF virtual printer).  This installs a new virtual printer on your computer and you can then print any format of document to a new PDF file (via printing to the virtual printer) which I then save in the same location.

Storage Options

Once you have your collection of PDFs, what to do with them?   The system you select will depend on how fancy you want to be, how secure, how many documents you are likely to store, and of course how much you want to spend.

Here are some suggestions:

Accounts System – For any business money based documents (receipts, invoices, etc) I would recommend uploading them to your on-line accounting system.  I use Freeagent for all my money business processing, and I upload all documents associated to incomings and outgoings as I record them on Freeagent.   Everything is then easily at hand and Freegant deals with the storage and backup of the documents.

Evernote – If you are an Evernote user, then all the documents can be uploaded to Evernote.  This has the advantages that Evernote will automatically OCR your documents for later searching and you can create folders for different document types.  However, whilst the basic account of Evernote is free, uploading large amounts of PDFs will soon move you into the realms of a paid account.

Windows/Mac File Store – the cheap and cheerful solution is to simply keep them in a windows or Mac file directory somewhere on your computer’s hard disk.  As with Evernote you could keep them all in one big directory, or have sub-directories for different categories and document types (such as invoices, contracts etc).  Just remember to perform regular backups of your file store.

Sharepoint – My own personal product of choice is Microsoft Sharepoint (as I have a home Windows server anyway).  Sharepoint comes in a variety of sizes, styles and prices.  As I was using sharepoint for the storage of my general business documents (via integration to office), it seemed the logical choice to store my PDFs there as well.

Third Party Applications – Finally, there are a variety of paid for and free Document Management solutions available, including products such as OpenDocMan which is one of the better open source document storage systems.

Happy scanning.

Do you keep a journal?  I don’t mean a scheduling of upcoming events and appointments, I mean a historical diary – as in the things that teenage girls are normally associated with (that may seem slightly sexist, but it’s generally accepted that boys don’t keep diaries).

Diaries and Journals can be life savers for contractors, freelancers and small business owners when you need to refer back about when things happened, who said what, when and the timeline of problems.   Somebody who can say in a meeting “Phil confirmed to switch off the server at 4:15pm on Tuesday 12^th” is going to be believed more than somebody who responds with “yes, but somebody, I think it was Tony, said not to – he may have said this on the Monday or the Wednesday – I think it may have been Wednesday”.

Diaries and journals don’t have to be big.  Business journals don’t have to be war and peace on everything that happened at every point in a day, but can be very useful to record key points as they occur.

I keep an electronic journal and quick but important events I like to record include:

• Go ahead’s during phone calls
• Key decisions (during a meeting or a chat, somebody says to go with option A or delay the project)
• When people promise to get back to me
• Dates when I send out documents, contracts or invoices
• Notes about disagreements, who was involved and how it was resolved

There are plenty of ways of keeping a journal.  For some, paper will work, but for me Electronic is best.  I keep an electronic journal on my Android Tablet (always with me during the working day).  Having an electronic journal means I can very quickly add a note, categorize it (normally by customer/prospect) and then quickly search for the key information.

Electronic journals are available on PCs (one is already available in Outlook), for iPhones/iPADS and of course Android (I use Orange Diary for android which I can recommend).

Making an entry during a phone conversation or meeting takes me just 10 or 20 seconds, but it has saved my bacon on a number of occasions.

The other day, I was a customer site working on a project, and the atmosphere there was tense.   In the IT department, 2 contractors were about to be told that their services were no longer required.   Letting people go is never nice, but in this situation it was a strange decision because the client still had work to be done, and had plenty of money to pay for external services.

So why were the contractors being released (let go, fired, whatever term you would like to use)?   It wasn’t because they were not working hard or because their work was sub-standard, but because they were not doing the job they were brought in to do.

These two contractors were being helpful; too helpful.   Whenever anybody had a question – they could answer it.  Whenever anybody had a problem, they would help fix it.  They were the original ‘go to’ pair – but this meant that the work they were tasked to do was not getting done.

Which leads me onto SEP.  Its three letters I bear in mind when I am working with clients.   SEP stands for Somebody Else’s Problem.

There have been many times when I have been on a customer site and I have overheard a conversation about IT problems of various kinds.   My helpful bone twitches and I want to wade in to show my expertise with their problem – dive onto a keyboard and sort the problem out.  But if it’s not related to what I am tasked to do, I will avoid it if it’s an SEP.   It’s not my problem.  It’s not what I am getting paid for.  If the bill payer wants to know where 2 hours have gone in the day, I don’t have to tell them I was helping Bill or Ted out rather than generating their much needed system.

It doesn’t mean I am not helpful.  I may suggest the solution, suggest the term to “Google”, suggest somebody to talk to who can help them.   But if it’s an SEP and I am not being paid to sort it out, I avoid actively getting involved.

And if the two contractors had done the same, they would still be earning the money.

I have a number of customers; some are new customers and we are just starting to do business together, and some are customers I have had for many years.  But there is one thing in common for all of my customers.  NONE of them are my friends.

It’s something I sometimes struggle to remember.  It’s very easy to treat them as friends because we know each other so well, spend so much time together and even do trips together where we share meals and drinks at night.  But, they are not friends.  At the end of the day, they are customers, and there are many good reasons for remembering to treat them as such:

• Friends you joke around with, but customers deserve respect and professionalism.  At all times
• Friendship leads to familiarity, familiarity leads to contempt, and contempt leads to ex-customers
• It is much harder to negotiate terms, rates and situations with friends
• Friends can ask for favours – customers can’t (well they can, but it’s harder)
• With friends you share secrets – you may bad mouth people, but in front of customers every previous project, customer and even competitor deserves respect.  Otherwise, what will they think you are saying about them?
• Friends can call you up at weekends – customers can also call you, but they get charged 7day support for doing so
• Customers pay you, friends don’t

I am not saying that you have to be stand-off-ish.  You can be friendly, courteous, and can even share a joke over a drink.  But at the end of the day, your customers are just that – customers – and should be treated as such.

Yesterday’s entry was a bit of a landmark on this site/feed.  It was the 200^th entry.   I have no idea how this happened – I started recording my business tips and before you know it – entry 200.

To celebrate the fact, I have taken all the posts, squeezed them together, and they are all available as a free ebook.   The formatting is not great, some of the pictures are a little large, and all the typos that were in the original posts are still there!  :-)    However, if you have just started reading and want to see what you have missed, they are all here.

Enjoy.

When you are on the lookout for more work, or new customers, there are several things you can try.  Here I list my top 14 places to find freelance or contract work, broken down into 3 groups depending on the urgency of your need:

Top Places to find Contract or Freelance work
These are the top places I recommend.   Even though I list other options below, 99.9% of any work can be found through this list.

Existing Customers – Contact your existing customer base, and ask them if they know of any other companies who need the same sort of service.  If so, could they provide a contact or even better, an introduction?
Old Customers – Don’t forget those old customers.  Get in contact and find out if there is any more work needed (or contacts in other companies)
Web Enquiries via Ad Words – If you have a web site with your details, use AdWords to boost its profile.  
Contract Databases – This web site is perfect for finding both contract and freelance work as advertised by agencies.  Just put in your skills and it will find all now work posted in the last few dates
Searchable CV Sites – Whilst using the contract database will get your CV and details out with the agencies, it does not hurt to also upload your CV to the various searchable job sites including JobSite, Monster and JobServe.

Worth a Try
If you have tried the top 5 places to find work, and have spare time, then you can try the following options.  These options do work, but the return on time and investment will be a lot lower than the previous list, so should only be used where you have exhausted the previous options:

Physical mailshot – Use one of the various mailing list companies, purchase a list of companies from them, and send out a mailer and brochure on what you or your company can offer.
LinkedIn contacts - Use LinkedIn to drop a line to your contact, or even the contacts of your contacts, asking if they know of any work going
Phone around the agencies – Depending on your industry, there are numerous agencies that deal with contract and freelancer work.   Contact them directly, make yourself know, and hopefully they can match you with contract work.
LinkedIn discussion groups – Depending on the discussion groups you join, there are occasionally discussions on companies needing contractors or freelancers.   There are groups for authors, marketers, salesman, developers, testers and analysts.

Only if you’re desperate
The final section is devoted to the list of options for the really desperate.   I personally do not know anybody or any company who has found work using these techniques.  I have seen many a blog or discussion about using them, but I personally do not use these as I don’t believe they work.  Bear in mind that these options are so heavily talked about, lots of people will be trying these.  These options are:

Twitter Traffic – Use tools such as Tweetdeck to monitor the twitter streams for keywords for your industry to see if anybody is talking about vacancies.  Bear in mind, you need to think about geographical filters, and need to react fast to any postings.
Create blogs – Creating blogs is supposed to generate traffic to your site – but with 26 new blogs crated every second, getting noticed is a hard fight, and the return of investment based on the effort is nearly not worth considering.
Free Content – Another technique is to create free content – papers, eBooks, applications and such.   I have done this in the past (ePapers) and whilst they have been read a lot (an awful lot), I have not seen a single enquiry from them.
Work Bidding Sites – Depending on your industry, there are a lot of work bidding sites out there.  However, unless you are prepared to work for pennies, the Asian bidders will always win when price is the main factor.
Local Media Adverts – It may be worth cutting through the noise of the internet by taking up an advertisement in the local or regional papers.  Generally, most papers will produce the artwork for you (based on a mock up you provide) within the price of advertisement.   The cost of an advert can range from a few £000 to a few £0000 depending on the size of the readership you want to cover. 
Search local companies through Google – The final suggestion is to use Google to search for local companies, and contact them directly by letter or email.  For me, this is to random to worth considering – you need to contact them at the right time, just as they have a need for your services, and be willing to want a contractor or freelancer instead of employing somebody in-house.

Today I went shopping for tyres for my car, and something occurred to me.   It struck me that I can’t actually remember the last time I went to a companies physical location to shop for anything – to traditionally shop.   For the tyres, I goggled all my local providers, went to their web sites, and checked on the prices of the range of tyres.   This has become my normal method of purchase now – using web sites to price up the products I want before I then go and purchase it (or order it if the price warrants an online purchase).   I suspect for more and more people, this is now the normal mode of shopping.

But you know what?  On a few of these sites, when I used the Price Enquiry button and was told to “Call now” for prices – I really could not be bothered.   I don’t want to get into a 5 minute conversation to get prices.  No, I expect to be able to find my prices on the web.  I don’t care if it’s a car tire, a tablet PC, a holiday or the services of a plumber – I want to know an idea of the price before I get in contact.

As I say, this has become the norm for me.   Yes, I will still ‘wander’ into shops for clothes, for food, for magazines and such.  But the times I use the web before I buy far out ways the phone up or wander in approach.   And I suspect that in the future I will start using the web for things like clothes and food shopping. 

Which brings me around to those companies with the ‘call me’ option as the ONLY way of finding out the price.  I went onto their web site (boosting their web hit count), tried to look at their prices, hit the call us area, and promptly moved onto the next site (so a web hit without a follow through).   Yes, car tyres are a commodity, but the tyres are actually part of a service (I am not going to fit the tyres to my car myself).   

So I am going so update my own site, and I am going to start listing typical project prices, and typical day rates – as part of an A/B site test.   If I demand to get an idea of prices before I make contract, you can bet there are others out there wanting the same from me.

So are you hiding your prices from your web visitors?  If so, is it costing you sales?

I know a freelancer/contractor who has a problem.   His problem is that when it comes to applying for work – he always worries that he does not have ALL the skills that a customer is looking for.  Therefore, he is very selective of the contracts that he applies for, with the result that he often finds himself on the bench rather than working and bringing in the money.

Finding yourself faced with a requirement for knowledge on a skill that you do not have is a fairly common occurrence.  In my line of work, typically contracts will be posted with between 10 and 12 skill sets required (or at least desirable), and typically a contractor can only expect to be able to hit 80% of the skills.   But from my point of view, rather than being something to be scared of, this is in fact the perfect situation.

For me, being a successful contractor or freelancer is all about knowledge, and without our boundaries being pushed, that knowledge will soon become confined, specialised and worse – dated.   I much prefer to have a requirement for 10 skill sets of which I have no knowledge of 1 or 2 of the skills required.   As long as it’s not the main skill the client needs, I am happy to either bluff my way thorough the interview or just admit I have no real knowledge of these skills, and then pick up the skill during the life of the contract work.

It’s a perfect win situation.   I can fulfil the majority of the requirements, I can pick up the new skill at the customers site as I work on the project, and effectively, I am getting paid to be trained.   I cannot think of a single contract or freelance job which I have undertaken which has not pushed my experience beyond my current knowledge, and where I have come out the other side more skilled than when I went in. 

So don’t be afraid of the lack of those skills – instead embrace the lack of knowledge and use the contract to expand yourself.

Recently, I was working on a project for a customer, and two of the tasks I was asked to do was to recruit more staff – one was a permanent member of staff and the other was another freelancer to complete some coding.   The permanent position went via a contract listing board, and the freelancer job went to one of the various freelance bid boards.  After 24 hours, the CV’s and bids started to come in, and I was completely shocked by how bad all of the responses were.

Take the CV’s for the permanent position responses.  The advert was for a SQL Server developer, with experience of finance data, and SSIS development skills.   99% of the covering letters went as follows:

To whom it may concern,

Please find attached my current CV.  If you think I would fit the bill, let me know.

Regards

Whoever

Some of the CV’s had the skills I needed, some of them didn’t, but going through all of the CVs was hard work trying to work out who was who.

Then there was the freelance development work – every single one of the responses went as follows:

Hello, We are Such and such a company.  We provide such and such technical skills.  We would love to work with you if you can supply details of the job.  We have many staff who we can use, we will assign one once you tell us what type of work is required, and will complete it quickly and cheaply.  Let us know the details and we will bid.

Seems fine, except the work requirement already said what the work was – it was very specific – it said the databases, how many columns were involved, what the code needed to do, the style of coding to be used, code language, etc etc etc.  Those responding clearly hadn’t even bothered to open the bid details – they had seen the category (coding) and the max bid price, and just sent out a standard cut-and-paste response.

The point is, all the responses, all CVs and all job bids were scatter gun – the people at the other end of the interweb wire were sending out their CVs and bid notes to as many people as possible in the general hope that somebody would bite.   It was really awful to read all the cover letter and bid notes.  If just one of them had taken the time to respond with something which tied them in to the requirement, they would have most likely been awarded the work.  None did – and there were a LOT of CV’s and bids posted.

If I was sending my CV out for the contract work, my cover note would have gone something like

Sir/Madam,

Please find attached my latest CV.  I can confirm that I am a SQL Server developer, and as required, I have extensive SSIS development skills.  I can also confirm that I have experience of the financial data processing as requested, in both a transactional and data warehouse context.  I therefore feel my skills match your requirement.

I hope you agree. If you would like to meet and discuss your requirement or this contract in more detail, my contact details are…. Etc

The scatter gun approach never works.  Agency staff don’t have time to check you match for jobs – so they are more than likely to just bin the CV.  And even if it gets through to the end recruiter, a scatter gun cover letter will never make your CV stand out – you need to be specific and TELL THEM why they need to select you for the contract role, freelance gig or customer work.

So if you are sending out your CV and you are not hearing anything back, take it from me – it’s likely your CV was never opened because your cover letter didn’t call them to action.

As a freelancer or small business, it is very common to be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement.   A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement, confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties  that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to by third parties.

When you are working for or on behalf of a client, they will generally want to protect the data, processes, and systems they have in place.  The NDA is the most common way of doing this, and as long as you read through what you are signing, you should be generally happy to agree to and sign such documents.

However, what happens when you hand out work to somebody else?   What happens when you outsource some of your work, or work with a virtual assistant (VA), a graphical designer or any other professional?  Should you yourself use an NDA agreement?  The answer is.. when in doubt, use an NDA.

As a freebie, you will find below the NDA that I use for most situations.  Its all been legally checked and verified, and is a nice neat version of a 2-way NDA.   That means, it protects you as somebody who is supplying the requirement, and also protects the person providing the service.  Please feel free to view, print, download and use.